The November Man (2014)

THE NOVEMBER MAN  (2014)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Roger Donaldson
    Pierce Brosnan, Olga Kurylenko, Luke Bracey,
    Bill Smitrovich, Amilia Terzimehic, Will Patton
My old friend Dr. Sporgersi was the one who first recommended the "November Man" novels to me, years ago. The books are the work of a Chicago newspaperman named Bill Granger, and they're about an American assassin named Devereaux, who works for an entity called "R Section", an outlier of the CIA that specializes in wet work. Devereaux's like a more remote, more cryptic, more elusive James Bond, and when I read on IMDb that Pierce Brosnan was going to play the role in a "November Man" movie, I thought it had real potential. That the finished product is mostly a case of potential unrealized isn't Brosnan's fault. Accent notwithstanding, he's well-cast as the methodical, cold-blooded Devereaux. It's the script, which takes most of the mystery out of the character and most of the intrigue and suspense out of the plot. What you're left with is a formula action flick in which things blow up and guns go off and cars chase each other at high speeds through oddly empty city streets. It's based very loosely on "There Are No Spies", which I remember as the best of Granger's books, the one I couldn't put down, and I guess this is one case where I'd suggest skipping the movie, if you can dig up a copy of the novel instead.